A few weeks prior to the 2001 U.S. Open reigning champion rode out the final race for Team Kawasaki and switched to Team Honda. The U.S. Open would be his first race on the new steed. Carmichael’s long standing relationship with Kawasaki dates back to his record-setting amateur days. Honda was all smiles about the new recruit but the fans’ couldn’t have been less supportive.

Two-thousand-and-one was a bitter-sweet year for kid that shed 20 lbs of baby fat and started training like a mad-man. After two tumultuous years of crashing in the premier class, Carmichael posted one win, which was at Daytona and is often considered more of an outdoor track.

Sick of losing, he stepped up his game and belted off 14 wins, 13 consecutive, but along the way he dethroned ‘The King’ Jeremy McGrath. Fourteen different stadiums around the country, packed mostly with McGrath fans, agonized as Carmichael roughhoused his way to victory over the most revered name in supercross. In AMA Motocross, suite followed as won seven main events en route to his third championship.

As the lights went down for opening ceremonies of night 1 of the U.S. Open. Carmichael was lowered from the MGM Grand Garden Arena ceiling donning a ‘king’s outfit.’ The crowd detonates a loud discharge of rejection of Carmichael. Was it the move to Honda? Was it their denial of a new king?

Carmichael has openly admitted that the booing bothered him emotionally, but it didn’t get in the way of his racing. He swept both nights of racing and became the first racer in U.S. Open history to win two championships.